Almost scammed for over $6K - "Collin Samuel" "Samuel Stone"

[MrNemo]

What may have been a scam may simply have been laziness on part of the user.

Will edit when there is resolution.

Buy from TRF and nowhere else is my advice.

[Beauregard]

Small price to pay for dodging a bullet. Thanks for the info and details on how you debunked him.

[MrNemo]

This gentleman has struck again. He photoshopped a tag onto an existing (stolen) photo. Very clever.

Before:


After:

[sleddog]

Only ever deal with a vetted and confirmed person, and NEVER assume just because your are on TRF that things are good.
Let your guard down, you will get burned, anywhere on the internet!

[rolehex]

Amazingly clever and looks pretty legit too. Wow, they are getting better at this and its scary. Almost need to Facetime with people now or have them send over a picture of the watch next to a saying of your choice immediately so they don't have time to Photoshop anything.

[MrNemo]

What makes this all a bit tedious is many sellers, especially Rolex sellers, only accept PayPal Gift or bank wire which offers zero buyer protection. It is causing me issues because I can't send bank wires anymore (even if not a scam, what if the person gets in a car accident or something?) so unfortunately my selection is now limited. Also a lot of the big well-known dealers who do begrudgingly accept PayPal are increasingly pushing the newer models which is useless to me because I'm still stuck in pre-rehaut universe. I've considered making a forced-vetting community where the mods have people's info on file for high value sales. This is all getting way too dangerous and this last guy almost pushed me out of the hobby for good. Many people on here can absorb a $6K for me would be like getting punched in the gut by 80s Mike Tyson.

[myclue]

I'd tell all buyer to just cough up and pay an extra 4% and use paypal to get a piece of mind on buying these high end watches

[deja]

omg, that is horrendous. that actually looks like its on the watch to the non-suspecting eye..which in this case could ONLY possibly be no-one other than the originator of the photo.

[MrNemo]

I just sent a seller photos of two forms of state IDs, my linkedin, two phone numbers, address, gave a brief history of my life, my user ID on multiple forums, and I paid the PP fees. Sellers are very paranoid and I understand but it sucks being in the buyer's shoes as well. Scammers have really tarnished this hobby.

As for this photo, it is from a CACHED WUS listing, so someone would have to find a sales thread that doesn't even exist anymore to locate it. God help us all.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[DJ_Ambrose]

I'm autistic and one of my autism things is patterns. I was on ebay earlier looking for scam Rolex sellers (I enjoy figuring them out) when something caught my eye. It wasn't an outright scam, but one seller had clearly (at least to me) "cleaned up" his photos of the watch with photoshop. What caught my eye was that he had inadvertently erased about one-quarter of the 7 stick on the dial. Photoshop is so good and easy to use I guess it's too tempting for some sellers to try and get advantage over other sellers.